Reflective Essay_Grace_s3574544_Assignment #4 Part B3
This post is the last 1/3 of Assignment #4 Part B.
It is a self reflection of our final cut. Scroll down for video.
Click here for Assignment #4 Part B1, “Feedback on Rough Cut”.
Click here for Assignment #4 Part B2, “Review of Girona Group 6’s Final Cut and Melbourne Group 6’s Rough Cut”.
When we were first tasked to speculate how Girona might be, I took the opportunity to observe my brain process; my mind searches for past experiences to create new understandings or imagined possibilities. I knew that Girona was a city located in Spain. So I brought to my conscious mind, anything I associated with Spain and the countries near it. I found this self-reflexive exercise interesting and wished to encourage viewers of our final video to do the same.
I wondered how to achieve this objective using footage of Girona and Melbourne together. Looking through footage from our Girona peers, my impression of the city solidified. Compared to the time of our first assignment, now I have a more concrete perception of the place. This change happened because Girona had been communicated through media and specifically through film form. Viewing the Girona students’ videos engaged my sense of sight and hearing; I tried to make sense of their points of view as residents by relating to my own perceptions as a resident in Melbourne. What my mind was doing for my first assignment was happening again: making associations by bridging the foreign with the familiar.
By then, the film form of our final video had become more structured and clearer in our plans. We wanted to connect both cities by creating graphic matches of their locations thereby communicating the places and residents’ activities they share in common. Text on-screen instructs viewers to guess which footage was shot in which city. Through the format of this puzzle game or knowledge test, viewers are invited to participate in an exercise, to think about their own understanding and associations with Melbourne and Girona.
Borrowing Bill Nichols’ six modes of documentary, “Relational Space” embodies a few modes. It is a poetic documentary; shots are arranged by means of association. It is a participatory documentary that makes explicit the presence of the filmmaker/s and their influence; the text on screen is written in first person. It is reflexive; the video begins like a vlog; filmmakers explain why and how the video is constructed; it is “a game” that ropes the viewers to join. It is observational; the video consists of shots that is recorded by an unobstructed camera, revealing the environment of its operator.
This observational style allows us to stay true to our Girona peers’ connection with their city. By incorporating their footage, we view Girona through their metaphorical and literal lens. We see that Girona seems to have a balanced demographic of youths and the elderly. People walk often. There are places for leisure. There are sounds of construction and development. So we sought to incorporate shots of Melbourne’s residents moving, at leisure or with purpose, details of the similar buildings and sounds of construction as well.
“Relational Space” is inspired by similar documentaries: Observe (Christopher Lecnik, 2019), Rain (Joris Ivens, 1929), News from Home (Chantal Akerman, 1977). Most of their shots are stationary, observational and recorded in urban spaces. Since the still shots are held longer than most narrative videos, it incites a sense of curiosity about the contents within the frame as viewers search to answer the point of keeping watch a location that lacks obvious action.
I think our video has many areas for improvement. Since it is structured as a game, the end game can be more satisfying or at least make clearer what a viewer ‘wins’ by participating and watching the video till the end. The game also lacks the challenge, especially for residents of both cities, to differentiate the location of images based on the quality of recorded footage and other visual clues such as famous landmarks, physiognomy of local demographic, signs and spoken language of camera operator or people in the shot. The beginning of the video includes a bird’s eye shot of Girona that informs the landscape and colour of buildings in the city. This obvious ‘key’ in the game may set up the video as unchallenging and unsatisfying to participate in. I am unsure how to construct it in a more engaging yet meaningful way, to say that ironically, while it is a game about spotting the difference, it is more about exploring the similarities between places and culture.
Having assessed the folders of pooled footage from Girona, we have not exhausted similar locations to record in Melbourne, such as St. Kilda and food festival sites. Some shots can also be re-recorded and used for a slower cut and draw out that sense of exploration evident in the above-mentioned videos that provided the inspiration. I cannot tell if “Relational Space” is doing too much or too little or maybe nothing at all.
Another obvious area to improve on is grammar; there are two typo errors in the video. I did not ask for help from someone else to proof-read or comment on the structure and effect of the final cut.
Watching a video of a city can help us relate to the filmmaker or subject’s personal experience of living in it. However, the format of an unedited video has its limitations in communicating the physical city. Viewers would be able to receive information that engages their physical senses of sight and hearing; viewers can see and hear what the locale physically contains such as the architecture, general landscape, types of human activities in more specific sites within it. However, since environments in different cities can look similar and footage can be edited, viewers can be manipulated to the filmmakers’ intentions. In future, should virtual reality technology be combined with advanced 4D cinema effects, more information about the city can be mediated and engage viewers’ sense of smell and touch as well.
